Yale University Libary: International Projects and Activities

JEFFRY LARSON (Librarian for Romance Languages & Literatures, Linguistics, and Classics) attends the fifth annual Salon de l’Autre Livre in Paris. His report is available on the Web site of the Western European Studies Section (WESS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries.

December 7, 2007
YESTERYEAR: THE DAYS OF GLORY OF THE AFRICAN LIBERATION MOVEMENTS

A lecture by professor Immanuel Wallerstein, presented in conjunction with the opening of the exhibit AMANDLA! Southern African Liberation Posters from the Collection of Immanuel Wallerstein.

Ten librarians from Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe spent a full day at the Yale Library as part of a professional development trip made possible by a grant from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), administered by the Committee of Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA).

The purpose of their trip was to build a network of library professional experts in two areas: (1) Internet use in libraries (policies, experiences, privacy concerns, etc.) and (2) The role of the library in providing public health information, particularly HIV/AIDS. These topics were the focus of two presentations specially organized for them at the Yale Library, one dealing with the public use of the Internet and workstations in the library, and the other focused on the HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative) program.

Their week-long trip to the United States also included visits to Wesleyan University, the Hartford Public Library, the Connecticut State Library, and the Queens Library.

CESAR RODRIGUEZ (Curator, Latin American Collection) attended the Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara 2007, during an acquisition trip to Mexico that included visits to several publishing houses, rare book shops, and university research institutes in Mexico City, Queretaro, Puebla, and Aguascalientes.

November 7, 2007
Creating Germany's National Myth: The Nibelungenlied and its Homerian Context

A medieval “best-seller,” the Nibelungenlied soon fell into obscurity. When a manuscript of the epic poem was discovered in 1755, German literary critics hoped it would come to rival Homer’s epics in popularity and esteem. Critical studies and new incarnations of the epic began to appear, from the first fragment, Chriemhild’s Revenge (1757) through Wagner’s Ring cycle and beyond. Against the backdrop of German admiration for ancient poetry, particularly the Iliad and the Odyssey, this exhibition chronicles the creation of a “German National Myth” from the ill-suited cloth of the Nibelungenlied.

On view until January 9, 2008 at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, which turns 25 this year, is the focus of an article posted today on the ORF's (Österreichischer Rundfunk, the Austrian national public service broadcaster) Web site. The article (in German) is based on an interview with Geoffrey Hartman (Sterling Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature and co-founder of the Archive) and Stephen Naron, one of the archivists working on the Fortunoff initiative.

Welcome to Dr. GRACE SAW (Executive Manager of the Dorothy Hill Physical Sciences and Engineering Library, University of Queensland, Australia), who begins today her month-long visit to Yale under the auspices of the International Associates program. For a profile of Grace, click here.

Dorothy WOODSON (Curator, African Collection) joins Phil Jones (Director, University Career Services), Karyn Jones (Director, Study Abroad Program), Diana Cooke (Associate Director, Undergraduate Admissions), and Lamin Sanneh (D. Willis James Professor of Missions & World Christianity) in the panel The Road Less Traveled, exploring Yale's relationship with Africa. The panel is part of the Africa Week program of events at Yale.

A two-day conference on one of the major contemporary Hebrew poets, held at Yale University and coordinated by Nanette Stahl (Curator, Judaica Collection).

For a program, locations, speaker biographies, and information about Amichai, see the conference Web site.

The Near East Collection, in collaboration with the New Haven Free Public Library, presents a documentary by Turkish director Melis Birder who, taking advantage of a solo visit to Iraq, portrays a more intimate and human side of Baghdad, woven with the joys, fears and hopes of a young woman's everyday Iife.

JEFFRY LARSON (Librarian for Romance Languages & Literatures, Linguistics, and Classics) attended Liber 2007, the Spanish Book Fair in Barcelona, as the guest of the Trade Commission of the Spanish Embassy in Miami.

Liber is the most important publishing fair in Spain and Latin America, with the participation of 700 publishing companies. In addition to European firms, this year there were companies from Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, the United States, Australia, Morocco, Taiwan, China and Japan, among others. Rumania and Russia participated for the first time.

The show was visited by 12,000 professionals from 60 countries, such as Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Colombia and Brazil, as well as Japan and China, who visited the show for the first time, and the European Union. 15% of visitors came from abroad.

TATJANA LORKOVIĆ (Curator, Slavic and East Euroepan Collection) attended the 8th International Conference "Issyk-Kul- 2007: Libraries and Democratization of Society," held on the Issyk-Kul Lake, near the town of Cholpon-Ata, in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, where she delivered a paper entititled "Collecting Central Asian Materials in Large Academic libraries in the United States." A report of her visit to Kyrgyzstan and participation in the conference is available here.

This exhibition of books produced between the 16th and 19th centuries documents religious, civic, and public festivals in the towns and provinces of Italy. Such festivals are as old as Italy itself, but the tradition of publishing lavishly illustrated books to record them began in the 16th century and was connected in most towns with aristocratic families and courts. Births and funerals, betrothals and weddings, elections and coronations, the visits of popes, princes, and princesses were the occasions for elaborate public events that included parades, dancing, singing, athletic competitions, mock battles, theater, opera, and banquets. Rulers of church and state competed to produce the most memorable events, and to this end they employed the best artists, architects, and engineers to design stage settings and floats; the finest actors and musicians for the performances; the best dancers for the ballets and riders for the equestrian demonstrations. Seeing these festivals as a reflection of their own prestige and a guarantor of their positions as rulers, they sought to document for posterity, and for personal propagandistic reasons, the splendor of their celebrations by having the leading artists and engravers produce the illustrations that embellish the festival books included in this exhibition.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, through January 9, 2008.

The Slavic Reading Room of Yale University Library would like to extend a warm welcome to Ms. ANDA SIMINA, Head of the Center of the Information and Bibliographic References at the National Library of Latvia in Riga, Latvia. Under the mentorship of the Curator, Tatjana Lorkovic, Ms. Simina will be spending the next three months as the Baltic Library Intern in the Slavic and East European Collections. Ms. Simina is the eighth visiting librarian to come to Yale under the auspices of the Dr. Kristaps Keggi Baltic Internship Program, and the sixteenth intern hosted by the Slavic Reading Room.

A graduate of University of Latvia, with the MA in Library Science and Information, Ms. Simina has worked for over fourteen years at the National Library of Latvia, holding a number of positions, and this year she was appointed the Head of the Center of the Information and Bibliographic References. Ms. Simina is continuing her education in information management at Yale and she will also study the management of digital collections and inter-library loans, and particularly the Borrow Direct System.

Ms. Simina will be based in the Slavic Reading Room and, while assisting with the processing of Baltic and Russian materials, she desires to learn more about other Library units and departments, in particular Electronic Collections, Integrated Library Technology Services, Inter-library Loan, Borrow Direct and Reference Services and Collections. This will give her the opportunity to familiarize herself with a variety of services, processes, and practices implemented in a large American academic library.

We would like to give Ms. Simina an opportunity to visit many of the departments in the Yale University Library during her stay here in order to gain an overview of how large research libraries function in North America. If your department so desires, contact us to arrange a visit for her in your area. Please help us make her internship a memorable one.

CHARLES GREENBERG (Cordinator, Curriculum and Research Support, Medical Library) receives approval to be on the roster for the Fulbright Senior Specialist Librarians. The Roster is a list of all approved candidates who are eligible to be matched with incoming Fulbright Senior Specialists project requests from non-U.S. post-secondary academic institutions. Academic librarians are encouraged to apply. Fulbright commissions and U.S. embassies have access to the Roster through a secure Web system. The Fulbright Senior Specialists Roster is not available to the general public. The grant covers the international travel, in-country expenses (lodging, food and in-country transportation provided by the host institution) and an honorarium for the Senior Specialist grantee only. The projects supported by a librarian specialist would be expected to take 2-6 weeks of visitation.

September 6, 2007
The Very Picture of Transgression: Visions of Pirates since 1650

The ‘Golden Age’ of Western piracy (ca. 1650–1730) spawned an extraordinary amount of lore and legend—and the pirate representations inspired by these legends continue to proliferate today. This exhibition charts the expansion and development of the Western pirate’s image, from its inception in early trials and swashbuckler histories to its position in the romantic and sometimes lurid depictions by twentieth-century artists. Printed documents and original art from the Beinecke Library’s collections illustrate the evolving image of the pirate and its multifaceted, shifting role in music, theatrical arts, adventure tales, and reportage of the past three and a half centuries.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, through October 31, 2007.

This year's 18 World Fellows, representing 18 countries and a wide range of professional fields and backgrounds, are paired with librarians and area curators who assist them with their research needs at Yale.

The Yale World Fellows Program is one of the initiatives launched by University President Richard C. Levin in 2001, on the occasion of Yale's tercentenary and aimed at enhancing Yale's global footprint.

In honor of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade, this exhibition gathers materials from across the Beinecke Library's collections to document aspects of slavery in the United States and abroad: the slave trade, abolition, emancipation, and individual experiences of slavery from various points of view, including those of slave owners, politicians, and former slaves. The exhibition includes manuscripts and rare printed materials from the 18th and 19th centuries such as a slave ship log, trade and legal documents, photographs, and personal correspondence. Literary materials will also be on exhibition, including early editions of the works of Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass and the manuscript of The Bondwoman's Narrative, thought to be the first novel written by an African American woman and the only novel written by a fugitive slave.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, through October 31, 2007.

August 28, 2007
The New Haven Free Public Library and the Near East Collection at Yale University Library present All About Darfur, a film by Taghreed Elsanhouri (82 minutes, 2005, Sudan and United Kingdom, in Arabic and English with English subtitles ).

August 16-17, 2007
Electronic Resource Management Systems: A Solution with Its Own Challenges
Pre-conference organized by the IFLA section on Serials and Other Continuing Resources (SOCR) and held at the University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa, before the official opening of the World Library and Information Congress in Durban. A number of Yale Library staff members were involved in various capacities in the planning and organization the event, including Ann Okerson (Associate University Librarian for Collections and International Programs), Kimberly Parker (Head of Electronic Collections), Graziano Krätli (International Program Support Librarian), Jessica Slawski (Research Assistant), Meng Tang (Workstation Support Specialist), and Roy Bohlander (Assistant Financial Director).

Junglim CHAE (Yonsei University, Seoul) starts a fellowship at the East Asia Library funded for 12 months through Title VI (9 months) and her home institution (3 months). Her project will be Korea Collection development and support.

August 10, 2007
SCOPA Forum on the Digitization of the Swedish National Archives

The Standing Committee on Professional Awareness (SCOPA) is pleased to host Martin Jacobson, Head of Technology and Development at the Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images (Statens ljud- och bildarkiv, or SLBA). Mr. Jacobson will speak about his experiences working with the SLBA to migrate substantial parts (1.5 million hours worth) of the Archive's analogue audio and video collections to digital files, which will be made available online. He will discuss many of the “unconventional methods” used to complete this task such as high-speed transfer, automation using robotics, and a suite of custom scripts that automatically process the digitized files.

WANG Liang (Fudan University, Shanghai) starts a fellowship at the East Asia Library funded for six months through the Kwok grant. His project will involve cataloging of Chinese imprints dated 1796 through 1912.

August 1, 2007
THE EAST ASIA LIBRARY AT 100
Yale’s East Asia Library is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its founding as an organized collection under curatorial direction with an exhibit in the Nave of Sterling Memorial Library. Treasures from the collection, including woodblock printed books and handwritten manuscripts, are on display along with materials that document the collection’s history and growth. More...

Professor Umezawa Fumiko of Keisen University in Tokyo leads the annual Komonjo/Kuzushiji Workshop with teaching materials drawn from two premier collections of pre-modern printed books, scrolls, and manuscripts in Yale's Beinecke Library: the Japanese Manuscript Collection and the Yale Association of Japan Collection.

The Workshop is sponsored by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Libraries, and the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale and organized by Professor Edward Kamens, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Ellen Hammond, Curator of the East Asia Library.

Islamic manuscripts uniquely mirror the civilization that produced them. The entire gamut of learning can be seen in these pages, from grammar, literature, and poetry to theology, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. The Islamic manuscript shows not only the beauty and variety of Islamic calligraphy, illuminations, and paintings, but also the extreme care various artisans took in penmanship, binding, and papermaking. These colorful illuminations and miniatures transcend time and place, providing a window into pre-twentieth-century Islamic culture.

TOBIN NELLHAUS (Librarian for Drama, Film, Theater Studies) attendED the 2007 IFTR/FIRT (International Federation for Theatre Research) conference on "Theatre in Africa - Africa in the Theatre," held at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Two recipients of the David M. Stowe Fellowship for Mission Research will arrive on campus this week and will attend the annual conference of the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and Non-Western Christianity.

Gu Jun received a Ph.D. from Peking University in 2001 and now works at the Research Center of Overseas Sinology at Beijing Foreign Studies University. His current research focuses on Samuel Wells Williams, one of the first American missionaries to China and the first professor of Chinese at Yale. The Williams papers are held at Sterling Manuscripts and Archives. Prof. Gu Jun will use the missions-related collections at the Divinity Library to pursue his research for the coming year.

Laszlo Gonda is an ordained pastor in the Reformed Church in Hungary and a senior lecturer in missions and ecumenical studies at the Debrecen Reformed Theological University. He received his M.Div. degree from the Debrecen Reformed Theological Academy in Hungary, the M.Th. from the Reformed Theological University in the Netherlands, and is now in the doctoral program at the University of Utrecht. His field of research is the development of the theology of mission in the Reformed Church in Hungary in an ecumenical context, with emphases on the impact of John R. Mott, Hendrik Kraemer, Johannes C. Hoekendijk, and Willem A. Visser't Hooft in Hungary. The John R. Mott papers are held at the Divinity Library.

The David M. Stowe Fund for Mission Research was established by his family, in part, to provide funding for scholars to come to New Haven to use the Day Missions Collection.

The Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and Non-Western Christianity has met annually since 1992, alternating between Yale Divinity School and the University of Edinburgh.

Graziano Krätli, International Program Support Librarian, made a presentation on the International Associates Program at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The presentation was one of four delivered at the International Paper Session organized by ALA's International Relations Round Table (IRRT) with the theme "Cooperation Among Libraries Within the Same Geographic Region." The other three papers were on "HELLIS: A Network of Health Science Librarians Across Asia," "Nurturing a Dialogue between American and National Universities in Qatar," and the European project "e-Books on Demand (EOD)."

TERESA MIGUEL (Reference Librarian, Lillian Goldman Law Library) attended the 100th Annual Meeting and Conference of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) in New Orleans, Louisiana, 14-17 July 2007, where she took part in a panel of law professors and law librarians exploring “The Spanish Influence in Louisiana Civil Law.”

June 14, 2007
THE RESOURCES OF THE CONSORTIUM OF EUROPEAN RESEARCH LIBRARIES (CERL)

Marian Lefferts, Executive Manager of the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL), presents an overview of three interesting resources that the Consortium supports and to which Yale University has access. These are:

Hand Press Book (HPB) Database - The HPB has the goal of being a union catalogue of all books printed in Europe between ca. 1455-ca. 1830. The database currently includes more than 2.7 million records from libraries across Europe.
CERL Thesaurus - The CERL Thesaurus contains names of persons, corporate bodies, places and printers/publishers recorded in books or other material printed during the hand-press era (1450 - ca. 1830). Authority files contributed by CERL member libraries and other libraries/projects concentrating on the history of the book are brought together and made searchable in one single system. The CERL Thesaurus currently comprises 654,196 records.
CERL Manuscript Portal - The CERL Portal (CP) provides access to distributed databases containing manuscripts materials, printed works, photographic material and other special materials. The focus lies on manuscripts materials, but the Hand Press Book Database, with currently ca. 3,000,000 records, can be included in the search as well. Databases that are included are either harvested, i.e. the records have been collected from its original database and stored in an integrated, local index, or are accessed on the fly the records are collected through a live connection.

Yale University Library is currently the only North American member of the Consortium, and has contributed more than 270,000 records to the HPB database, making it one of the largest contributors.

Charles Greenberg (Coordinator, Curriculum and Research Support, Medical Library) attends EDT 2007: Added Values to E-Theses, the 10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations held at Uppsala University, Sweden.

EVVIVA WEINRAUB (Electronic Collections) participated in the "International Issues in Developing Countries" session of the Annual Conference of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), Denver, Colorado, 3-6 June 2007. Evviva's presentation focused on how and why Yale became involved in HINARI & OARE and what these two programs offer.

June 1, 2007
Rudyard Kipling: The Books I Leave Behind

This exhibition, focusing on the life and works of Rudyard Kipling, a writer who appealed to a vast audience with his novels, poems, and works for young readers, is drawn principally from the collection given to Yale by David Alan Richards (Yale College '67; Yale Law School '72). While tracing the development of Kipling's writings, the exhibition pays special attention to variant editions and elusive printings of many of his rarest works, reflecting the exhaustive research in Richards's recently published bibliography of Kipling. News release...

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, through September 15, 2007.

Susanne Roberts (Librarian for European History and Coordinator of Humanities Collections) and Jeffry Larson (Librarian for Romance Languages and Literatures, Linguistics, and Classics), together with other members of WESS and SALALM, attended some “America Reads Spanish” events held in conjunction with BookExpo America 2007 in New York City.

In addition to meeting with a Spanish publishers at the Javits Convetion Center, the group attended a presentation, at the Instituto Cervantes, of Essential Guide to Spanish Reading, an annotated catalogue of 500 Spanish-language titles covering all literary genres. The work is based on a selection process that involved librarians in charge of Hispanic and Latin American collections in public, academic and research libraries in the United States (Jeffry contributed a few annotations), as well as authors, editors and booksellers who helped to significantly enrich the final results. Free copies of the Guide, published by America Reads Spanish, can be requested at the Miami office of the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (2655 Le Jeune Road, Suite 1114, Coral Gables, FL 33134; tel. 1 305 446 4387; fax 1 305 446 2602).

America Reads Spanish is a campaign developed by the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade and the Spanish Association of Publishers Guilds to increase the circulation and use of Spanish-language materials in libraries, schools and bookstores throughout the United States.

May 17, 2007
YUGOSLAV VOICES FROM THE HOLOCAUST

Yugoslav Voices from the Holocaust is a thirty minute montage of survivor testimony taken from the collection at Yale's Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. In this edited program, survivors describe the Holocaust in the former Yugoslavia as they experienced it. The program includes excerpts of Jews rescued by Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians; a Serbian non-Jewish rescuer whose husband was shot for hiding Jews; survivors of concentration camps in Yugoslavia, and those deported elsewhere; concentration camp prisoners who revolted and escaped; and partisans. The survivors tell of the Sephardic Jewish community before the war, life under Nazi occupation, liberation, and challenges they faced after the Holocaust. The survivor and witness testimonies were recorded in the United States, Israel, and the former Yugoslavia between 1982 and 1996.

ROWENA GRIEM (Catalog Librarian) attended MARC 21 – Experiences, Challenges and Visions, an international workshop organized by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library), supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Resource Foundation) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Attended by over 70 participants from countries that have recently transferred to the MARC 21 format and countries that are still considering the change (including Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the meeting was an opportunity to share records and experiences, and to encourage cooperation.

Rowena's conference report appears on the August 2007 issue of ALCTS Newsletter Online, the bulletin of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services.

Evviva Weinraub, OARE Program Support Librarian, visited the United Nations offices in Nairobi, Kenya, in order to train a new employee hired by UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) to take over responsibilities related to the day-to-day operations of OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment).

While in Nairobi, Evviva had the opportunity to work on policy decisions for the program, meet with a large number of UNON (UN Office in Nairobi) employees to promote the project, and further the Yale Library's partnership with UNEP. In addition, she attended a meeting of MESA (Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability into African Universities) and was on-hand to answer questions related to the OARE program.

May 4, 2007
A WORLD CONNECTED: HOW TRADERS, PREACHERS, WARRIORS AND ADVENTURERS SHAPED GLOBALIZATION

An illustrated talk by Nayan Chanda, Director of Publications for the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, and Editor of YaleGlobal Online, in conjunction with the opening of the new Library exhibit The History of Globalization: Artifacts and Documentation from Yale's Collections, in the Courtyard Corridor.

To be followed by a book signing of Nayan Chanda's new book, Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warriors Shaped Globalization (Yale University Press, 2007), hosted by the Yale Bookstore.

This talk is part of the "Global Faces of the Yale Library" season of events 2006-2007.

In the spring of 2007 a new chapter—or, rather, a tiny but meaningful paragraph—was added to the centuries-old book of the Yale-China relationship. It was written by Curtis Orio...

Jeffry Larson (Librarian for Romance Languages and Literatures, Linguistics, and Classics) co-authored the chapter "Selecting Library Materials in the Romance Languages" in the volume Building Area Studies Collections, edited by Dan C. Hazen (Harvard University Library) and James H. Spohrer (University of California Berkeley) and published by Harrassowitz.

CESAR RODRIGUEZ (Curator, Latin American Collection) attended the 52nd SALALM (Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Materials) conference, "Borders: Obsession, Obstacle, Open Door?" held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

April 19, 2007
BEFORE YOU GO: PREPARATION FOR CROSSING CULTURES
Jane Edwards, Associate Dean for International Affairs, Yale College

Yale has made it a primary goal to prepare students for leadership and service in an increasingly interdependent world, and as one strategy plans to provide an international experience for all undergraduates. This points to an assumption many of us share: that simply spending time abroad can have a transformative effect. Given the widespread expectation that experience abroad should now be part of a liberal arts education, it is interesting to consider some questions about how cross-cultural encounters function, and examine the extent to which students abroad really engage with other cultures. As we think about our students travels, we can also reflect on our own: how effectively do we engage with the societies we visit, and what is the best preparation for this engagement? Murder mysteries set in Sicily or in China, ethnographic accounts of travelling up the Amazon, sad but funny French movies, a Canaletto exhibition how can we use the rich resources around us to deepen our own experience and to understand that of our students?

April 5, 2007
INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL / GIFT POLICIES
Susan L. Carney, Deputy General Counsel, Yale University

Susan Carney joins the Library staff for a talk and discussion about federal regulations and University policies relating to foreign travel and gifts (what one can take when traveling abroad on University business and what one can receive, not just by way of tangible goods but also services such as accommodation, flights, and the like).

Susan Carney has been at the Office of General Counsel (OGC) since 1998, serving as Deputy General Counsel since 2001. Her practice focuses on research, intellectual property, technology transfer, and compliance. She serves on the Cooperative Research, Research Compliance, and Conflict of Interest Committees, and is a fellow of Silliman College. Before joining OGC, she served as Associate General Counsel of the Peace Corps, in Washington, D.C., and practiced law with private firms, also in Washington, where she represented large nonprofit organizations. She was a law clerk for Levin H. Campbell of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She received her A.B. from Harvard-Radcliffe College, cum laude, in 1973 and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, in 1977. She is a member of the Massachusetts, District of Columbia, and Connecticut bars, and serves on the Board of Directors of Fine by Me.

The spring issue of International Cataloguing and Bibliographic Control (ICBC), a quarterly journal published by IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, features a comprehensive article by Simon Samoeil (Curator, Near East Collection) on the project OACIS (Online Access to Consolidated Information on Serials) for the Middle East.

In this interview published in the April 2007 issue of Library Connect, Elsevier's quarterly newsletter, Ann Okerson (Associate University Librarian for Collections and International Programs) and Kimberly Parker (Head, Electronic Collections) comment on Yale's involvement in the OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment) program, launched in 2006 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale University, and scientific associations and publishers.

In this lecture, Benjamin Foster, Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature and Curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection, surveys the century and a half of Yale's involvement with Iraq and the Arab world, with an emphasis on recent events.

This talk is part of the "Global Faces of the Yale Library" season of events 2006-2007.

Kimberly Parker, Head of Electronic Collections, will be away from the Yale Library, seconded to the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. There she will be working on all aspects of the HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative) program, which provides readers in developing countries free or very inexpensive access to nearly 3,700 peer reviewed scholarly journals and databases in the biomedical arena.

March 15, 2007
KATE CAMPBELL HURD-MEAD, 1867-1941: DOCTOR IN CONNECTICUT, MEDICAL WOMAN OF THE WORLD

Invited lecture by Toby A. Appel, John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History, at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia on the topic of Hurd-Mead's work for the Medical Women's International Association, founded in 1919, and her attempt to write a history of women in medicine covering the world. More...

The centerpiece of the trip was a series of meetings at the University of Tokyo and its Library, with whom Yale is signing a significant memorandum of understanding for future cooperation. Hammond and Okerson joined D. George Joseph, Assistant Secretary of the University for International Affairs, in meeting with President Hiroshi Komiyama of and his senior staff to discuss the reciprocal arrangements for student and faculty exchanges in the coming years. Further detailed meetings were held with the University Librarian and his staff. A highlight of the visit was a seminar held on Wednesday, March 14, on the future of the humanities. Joseph and Hammond were joined as speakers by Professors Christopher Hill (East Asian Languages and Literatures) and Aaron Gerow (Film Studies). Hammond spoke about digital experiments and projects at Yale Library, Joseph gave an overview of the University's programs and directions, and Hill and Gerow spoke of the programs in their academic areas. A prolonged and lively discussion with the audience ensued.

Later in the visit, Hammond and Okerson also visited the library of Waseda University to develop further library contacts. While there, they toured the library, including its spectacular rare books and special collections, as well as the extensive and impressively managed digitization project for rare books (mainly Japanese) carried on in a state of the art laboratory there.

The trip concluded with a visit to Kinokuniya, the major supplier of Japanese materials to the Yale Library, with whom the Library is conducting an extensive experiment in outsourced cataloging. Staff of Kinokuniya demonstrated to their visitors a number of Japanese digital library projects, for which they are the primary vendor/supplier, and also the about-to-be-announced Japanese installation of OCLC's NetLibrary. Hammond and Okerson were received and hosted by Kinokuniya's Vice-Chairman, Kimiyoshi Yoshioka, and other lead staff of the company.

March 5-7, 2007
YALE LIBRARY PROJECT SPONSORS INTERLIBRARY LOAN WORKSHOP FOR MIDDLE EASTERN LIBRARIANS

The workshop, organized and held by the AMEEL project team on the campus of the University of Jordan in Amman, helps librarians from selected institutions in the Arab world to develop an understanding of how interlibrary loan and document delivery work in United States academic and research libraries, and to begin a conversation about successfully adapting these practices to the Arab context and practices of librarianship. Press release...

The Library acquired an extensive microform collection of German language publications on sexual experience and body culture, comprising more than 600 titles published between 1880 and 1932, for a total of ca. 105.000 pages on 1,450 microfiches. These titles provide socio-historical or aesthetic perspectives on sexual experience, sports, gender, sexual practises and/or body image in that time period. The diversity of titles ranges from Amerikanische Flagellantinnen (“American Flagellantes,” anonymously published in Prague in 1910) to Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years, trans. Deborah Simon, preface by Sander L. Gilman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), a multisexual and multicultural autobiography by N.O. Body, pseudonym of Karl M. Baer (born Martha Baer, 1885-1956), which became a bestseller when first published in 1907 and was later brought to the screen by the Austrian filmaker Karl Grune. For a description and a catalog of this fascinating collection, see: http://www.haraldfischerverlag.de/hfv/HQ/hq63_engl.php.

Women have served as healers throughout history. However, once universities were founded in the Middle Ages and formal medical education began, women were mostly barred from attendance and from receiving degrees. This special exhibit curated by Toby Appel, John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, features works by women before the era of medical and nursing schools for women. It highlights the many ways that women could and did participate in healing and health advocacy. Women served as midwives, naturalists and illustrators of herbals; translators of medical works; scientists; authors of cookbooks containing medical recipes; and writers on popular health especially the care of children. More...

The Mesopotamians recognized a range of human states of mind and behavior that they considered abnormal. Some of these would be diagnosed today as mental illness, such as chronic anxiety, depression, feelings of persecution, or delusions. The Mesopotamians personified and individualized these mental and emotional states as the results of a demonic attack or as witchcraft. They also recognized that excessive enthusiasm or desire could bring on a madness for power, fame, or consummation of desire.

The Mesopotamians believed that some tendencies toward poor or emotional health were innate traits of a person's character that could be diagnosed or predicted. Insanity was, to them, another state of being, in which a human was fully in the possession of a deity or demon. The symptoms of this were violence, rejection of social norms, unkempt appearance and frequenting places far from human society, and strange involuntary ways of speaking.

Mesopotamian literature and scholarship only rarely refer to going out of one's mind, so the concept of madness is broader today than it was in this most ancient culture, in which the abnormal and normal were deemed manifestations of a pervasive divine will and purpose.

Acquisition trip to Israel by Nanette Stahl, Curator, Judaica Collection. During her visit (the first in years due to travel bans), Nanette met with vendors with whom the Library already does business and sought out new vendors. She arranged to expand the range of materials the Library receives on approval to include non-print media as well. She also visited the studio of a book artist and purchased several of his limited edition books. The highlight of the trip, however, was attendance of the Jerusalem International Book Fair (JIBF), a biennial event which draws over 1200 publishers from more that 40 countries who display more than 100,000 books in different languages. This year, the fair presented several features about current Israeli culture, such as the impact that massive immigration from the former Soviet Union is making on Israeli society. An entire section was devoted only to books in Russian, and several of the lectures were presented in Russian. In addition, there were many lectures and discussions by and about Israeli and non-Israeli authors, some of them in Arabic, Italian, and other languages.

February 1, 2007
MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC CUISINE: THE TRADITION CONTINUES

From Babylonian clay tablets containing the oldest known cooking recipes, to medieval manuscript treatises from Baghdad, Persia, and Andalusia, to modern books published in the Middle East as well as in the West, this appetizing exhibition presented by the Near East Collection celebrates the richness and diversity of a culinary tradition spanning thousand of years and three continents at least. A bibliographic cornucopia which is, at the same time, a visual treat and a reminder to the palate.

January 31, 2007
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATE BEGINS HER INTERNSHIP IN THE SOUTHEAST ASIA COLLECTION

Mrs. Bethel Limzon, who will spend the next four months as a cataloging intern in the Southeast Asia Collection, is the fourth visiting librarian to come to Yale under the auspices of the International Associates Program. She comes from the Library of Congress Field Office in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she serves as the principal reviewer and trainer for the Cataloging Section. During her training in the Yale University Library, Mrs. Limzon will learn full-level original cataloging, while contributing to the original cataloging of Indonesian and Indonesian dialects, as well as Malay and other Southeast Asia Collection material for the Yale University Library.

Dr. Antonia Neubauer, Founder and President of READ Global, will talk about her experience in laying the foundation for a rural network of library community centers, and her commitment to promoting information and literacy around the world.

This talk is part of the "Global Faces of the Yale Library" season of events 2006-2007.

Drawn from the Alfred Heller Collection of Worlds Fairs, acquired by the Beinecke Library in 2005, this exhibition traces the evolution of the fairs from the Industrial and French Revolutions to the Second World War. Growing from small events targeted at a specialized audience to mass spectacles that attracted the largest crowds ever assembled, the Worlds Fairs played an integral role in shaping metropolitan landscapes in Europe and America as they emerged in this period. Experiments in architecture, mass transit, theme parks, crowd control, and the use of color and light as architectonic elements in the cityscape are among the themes highlighted, illustrated through a lavish use of posters, pamphlets, maps, government reports, commemorative albums, panoramas and peepshows, works of art, and literary satires.

January 15, 2007
L’AFRIQUE QUI DISPARAIT! THE CONGO POSTCARDS OF CASIMIR ZAGOURSKI

Exhibition based on the Casimir Zagourski postcard collection, now part of the Library's African Collection, which consists of 200 postcards made from photographs taken by Casimir Zagourski in Africa between 1924 and 1941, which formed a part of his overal project, "L'Afrique Qui Disparait" (Disappearing Africa). The photos are set in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly known as the Belgian Congo), Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Chad, Kenya, Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Congo-Brazzaville. The postcards depict a variety of aspects of everyday life in these different settings, including, for example, housing styles and traditional grave sites.

Nine Faculty Fellows from seven community colleges in Connectuct (Capital, Gateway, Housatonic, Manchester, Naugatuck Valley, Norwalk, and Quinebaug Valley) will attend a half-day orientation program to learn about the facilities, services, and resources of the Yale Library system. The program includes a tour of Sterling Memorial Library, an overview of Yale's special collections, and a meeting with the Library Liaisons who will assist the Fellows with their researches. A sample of this year's topics features Latin American Theatre, Trade Practices in the European Union, West African Drumming, Women in Middle Eastern Literature, and Europe-United States Trade Relationships with Respect to Cheese Products.

The Community College Faculty Fellowships Program (CCFFP) is one of the Programs in International Educational Resources (PIER) administered by the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies.

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